


Undeniable

by BlueSakura007



Series: Jen’s Fictional Male Characters and Female OC Short Stories [2]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Ending, Backstory, Childhood Memories, Courtroom Drama, Despair, F/M, Forbidden Love, Friendship, Heart-to-Heart, Multiple Endings, Origin Story, Post-Star Trek: Into Darkness, Protective Leonard "Bones" McCoy, Protective Spock (Star Trek), Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:07:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 19,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28170630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueSakura007/pseuds/BlueSakura007
Summary: When Khan is brought to trial for the events of STID, lieutenant-commander Zinalya Hamilton is called upon for a witness testimony, after which she not only suggests an alternative punishment for his crimes but also makes a rather controversial revelation.An alternate ending story idea I had for Into Darkness with Zinalya as my OC, and this story’s going to have a happy ending but also an alternative sad ending thrown in there because I’m basically a little bit of a sadist lmao.~
Relationships: Khan Noonien Singh | John Harrison/Original Female Character(s), Khan Noonien Singh/Original Female Character(s), Spock/Nyota Uhura
Series: Jen’s Fictional Male Characters and Female OC Short Stories [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2020570
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1 ~ Zin's Dilemma

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a little bit AU where the time between Khan’s capture by the Enterprise and the moment where the Vengeance appeared took place three days apart from each other. ^^

"By the power vested in the body by the constitution of the United Federation of Planets, we call this trial to order."

It was two and a half weeks after the USS _Enterprise_ crew’s ordeal against the man previously known as John Harrison; a week after he had revealed his real name to be Khan Singh, successfully exacted his revenge upon Admiral Alexander Marcus for the suffering he’d been through because of the latter and been pursued through the city of San Francisco by a then-enraged Spock. Soft, cold white morning light gently shone through the tall glass windows around the room and into the court where the senior officers of this aforementioned ship were gathered, sitting in the seating stands at the back with dozens of other people in attendance while currently wearing their dress uniforms. 

"Guards, bring forth the defendant."

In stepped the man of the moment himself from the doors at the very back of the courtroom, his forearms shackled together by a pair of metallic manacles and being accompanied on all sides by a group of security guards, clutching their rifles fiercely. 

"The defendant will remain restrained and under guard for the duration of the trial." Said the judge. Khan was now the centre of everyone’s attention behind him, especially the _Enterprise_ group, and even more especially captain Kirk, commander Spock, Dr. Marcus and lieutenant-commander Zinalya Hamilton, the ship’s security chief who was a half-and-half hybrid between a human and a Trill. She had long, dark burgundy hair stretching down behind her shoulders, hazel-green eyes and, due to this half Trill lineage, some of this race’s spots on either side of her body, from the top of her forehead down to her neck; in addition, her human parent was from Manitoba, making Zinalya herself a Canadian on this half.   
"Please state your full name for the record."

"My name is Khan Noonien Singh." He replied, as always in his baritone voice which felt to those around him as if it was reverberating through the floor itself. Some of these others sitting behind him in the audience felt themselves subconsciously shiver at the sound of it.

The _Enterprise_ officers who had been around Khan the most during the previous week spent the following minutes of the trial, after his charges had been covered and discussed, being called on to give testimony as witnesses. Three of these included Spock, Carol and Jim, and then came Zinalya’s turn.   
"And you were the main officer in charge of overseeing and guarding the defendant, Miss Hamilton?"

"Yes, your honour." She nodded her head. "As the ship’s chief of security I kept watch over him myself some of the time and also arranged where and when he’d be guarded by the other security officers onboard."

"It says here in your report which you submitted to Starfleet command that you spent the two days during his detainment on the _Enterprise_ visiting and conversing with him. Is this true?"

"It is, yes." Ignoring the slight but rising nervousness in the back of her throat, she answered the query truthfully while turning her head to the left to briefly look at the Augment, who was gazing back without any clear outward emotion but with recognition towards her after this time they'd spent talking, him in his clinically white brig cell and her on the other side of the glass. "I was talking to him about his motivations and reasons for his charges." She knew that she hadn't committed any actual crimes, but she knew that any indication of her getting friendly with Khan would be dangerous to her career and to some of her friendships amongst the other senior officers. Her social standing was one of the things she valued, and friendships could sometimes be a fragile thing indeed.

"Did he tell you anything that he revealed to Mr. Kirk and Mr. Spock later on?"

"Only that he was genetically engineered and that he’d come from very far away, but nothing that was any more specific than that." She subconsciously felt another growing lump in her throat at the memory of when he later revealed his true identity to Spock and their captain; when he told them about what Admiral Marcus had done to incur his wrath and started crying, right there and then. Zinalya would have been downright lying if she said that the sight of the tear on his cheek when he turned back around and the desperation in his voice at that time didn’t tug at her own heartstrings, even if it was just a little bit. "He was very brief during those moments when I was talking to him alone."

"So he didn’t make any clear indication to you individually that he had come from three centuries ago or indicate what he was planning on doing?

"No your honour." If she was being honest with herself, she actually felt like most of what Khan did after his prison cell revelation consisted of on-the-spot decisions: she wasn’t present to see it taking place, but from the way she understood it, he only attacked Kirk, Scotty and Carol on the bridge of the _Vengeance_ after the former ordered Khan to be stunned, proving himself, too, to be untrustworthy, and the following incident where he fought against Spock in the city was him taking out his rage and anguish due to being led to believe that his crew had all died when the seventy-two torpedoes were detonated, so she also couldn’t help but feel like Khan had been through quite the emotional rollercoaster. 

"Very well then. Thank you lieutenant-commander, that will be all." The judge concluded his series of questions directed at her, to which she gave a nod and, after giving another brief look at the man with the smooth black hair and snakelike pale turquoise eyes, walked back towards where she’d been sitting, which was in between Scotty and Chekov, her two closest friends. "Dr. Leonard Herman McCoy, step forward please."

As this chief medical officer stood up and made his own way down through the seating area towards the witness stand, Scotty smiled jokingly at Zinalya and Pavel, who were on his left. "I didn’t know his middle name was Herman - obviously something we can conveniently tease the laddie about later." He whispered to them with a chuckle, to which they both nodded and the latter smiled. The female one of the trio, however, tried to smile along with them and join in but found it to be difficult, because her head was full of various thoughts and ponderings relating to the defendant to the point where it was now taking up a large majority of her consciousness itself. He briefly craned his head around and looked around the room, like a cornered animal surveying its surroundings, before his eyes came to rest on her. 

"Zinalya?" Pavel’s voice caught her attention to her own left hand side, seeming to notice her expression of deep thought. "Are you alright?"

"What? Oh, yeah, yeah I'm okay, I was just miles away for a second there." She answered, temporarily bringing herself back to what was going on around her at that second as opposed to all the hypotheticals and questions racing through her mind. Khan had now turned his head back into the forward-facing position, occasionally looking at Bones as the latter gave his own testimony.

  
Generally subdued rock music played as the ambience of the club that Zinalya was sitting in later that evening. She had a glass of Scotch whisky gripped absentmindedly in her right hand, both of which currently resting on the bar whilst her other hand held her head, which was somewhat tilted to one side, and she was repeating the same thing she was in the middle of earlier in the courtroom: thinking and pondering endlessly on the mental predicament she found herself in. She was torn between two viewpoints, not entirely certain which one to take and therefore keeping herself stressed as it was an unresolved issue. On the one hand, she knew full well as much as anyone else what Khan had done and the kind of things he'd gotten up to - causing the deaths of numerous people, including Admiral Pike and even the obviously now-revived Kirk - but on the other, she wondered whether he truly deserved the extent of Spock's aggression that he was subjected to during the city chase. It was as if she had split herself into two totally different people altogether, one telling her that there was more to Khan underneath his chilling exterior, and that she didn't properly know what he was like in actuality, and the other constantly reminding her of the people he had killed and the acts he had committed.

"Hey." She turned her head around upon hearing the voice of her captain himself speak out. Jim appeared to be accompanied by Carol and lieutenant Uhura, all three of them dressed in casual clothes like the burgundy-haired hybrid herself was. "D'you mind if we join you?"

"No, go ahead."

Captain Kirk and the other two female officers with him all sat down adjacent to her at the bar, him and Carol on her right and Nyota on her left. "I used to come here a few times too. I actually still remember a fight I got into in this place a few years back - admiral Pike called it an ‘epic beating’." He chuckled fondly at these memories, although behind his smile Zinalya could also tell that it was simultaneously a slightly poignant expression and she, too, was affected by it.

 _Great_ , she thought. _I’m trying to make sense of all this, to decide what I really think, and Pike is getting brought up again. Just when I thought I was making some kind of progress in thinking it over..._

"Mr. Chekov told us that you seemed distant earlier today. Is something wrong?" Carol asked, noticing her own small change of expression.

"Well..." The half Trill-half human was up against a case of trying to work out how exactly to word what she was going to say. "To be honest I’m kind of in the middle of a dilemma."

"What is it?" Said Nyota. 

She paused, taking another of these moments where she formed the words in her head. "I’ve got a decision I need to make soon, and it might be one that takes me off the _Enterprise_ and to someplace else."

"You mean like a transfer?" Said Jim. 

The real reason for Zinalya possibly having to leave her posting in the near future wasn’t this and was instead something very, very different, but she could neither bring herself to tell the three the truth nor lie to them, so she simply nodded her head without giving a verbal response. "I don’t want to leave, because I still have friends onboard, and because my parents and brothers are here on Earth and where I’ll be going to is pretty far away. But it’s also a chance that means a lot to me and that I don’t want to pass up, so I feel like I’m being pulled in two different directions... and I basically have no idea which choice to make."

The trio around her thought for a second, before Carol enquired, "Have you weighed up the good and bad sides of them both?"

"At least somewhere around a thousand times, yeah."

"Then I think you should go with what your instincts are telling you - if accepting this chance is what you want to do, then you should do it." The woman with the chin length blonde hair nodded encouragingly.

"She’s right: do what makes _you_ happy." Concurred lieutenant Uhura.

"So... you guys will be okay with it if I do choose to leave? Things’ll still be alright between us?"

"Of course."

"You’re a good friend to us and the others." Added Jim with a reassuring smile. "We’ll be a little sad to see you go, but you deserve to make that choice if you’re sure you wanna do it. We’ll be rooting for you the whole way, Zin."

This supportive demeanour that he, Nyota and Carol were making use of towards her made her wish even more that she could tell them what the true reason for her leaving was, and what she was really planning to do.


	2. Chapter 2 ~ A Substitute Sentence

Throughout that night, back at her apartment in the city, Zinalya was once again deep in thought, with it this time being about the words of Jim, Carol and Nyota earlier: _do what makes you happy_. It took a little bit of time, her getting up out of bed restlessly at one point in the next morning's early hours to overlook San Francisco's constant air traffic scenery, but it was gradually becoming clearer and clearer; she was gradually beginning to gain more confidence at the thought of putting into action the plan she had for the day that was to come, which was the second and final day of Khan's trial. Finally, in just hours' time, she was going to get what she'd been plotting and mentally piecing together off of her chest. However, when she did bring this up in her mind, there were a few instances where she almost felt physically ill in the pit of her stomach. After all, she was going to be making this reveal in front of all of her fellow _Enterprise_ senior officers, many Starfleet higher-ups and dozens of other people, so it was hardly going to be a private matter, and it was also going to be a decision which would affect the rest of her life.  
Nonetheless, she allowed the joint feeling of closure at these five previously-mentioned words to flood through her mind and overtake this butterflies-in-the-belly sensation, sitting down in an armchair near to this overlooking floor-length window and allowing her mouth to gently curl into a small smile.

The day which followed was nearly just like the previous one, some more documents and testimonies being provided in the courtroom with Khan once again standing there off at the side, under heavy guard as always. As you might have guessed by now, his forearms were additionally in irons once more. The senior crew of the ship were in attendance like the last time, as they were ones who’d gone up against him during the oh so well-remembered incident the previous week which led to his arrest in the first place. 

"With these accounts given and the evidence we have at hand, the jury has made its verdict." Said the judge. "The defendant Khan Noonien Singh is hereby sentenced to be placed back into cryostasis, to be held indefinitely with the remainder of his crew at the Starfleet facility Sierra-Lambda 3."

The facial expression of this black-haired Augment, which was only a tiny outward change in his eyes and wasn’t noticed by anyone else as a result, was one of relief at the fact that he was finally going to be reunited with his friends - the people who he’d gone through thick and thin with back in the 20th century and were all he had left of this time period which he used to call home - but, at the same time, of subconscious surprise. This sentence he’d just been given was indeed one of the more likely possibilities he’d been expecting from this century’s ‘United Federation of Planets’, but he still felt a small jolt in the back of his mind at the fact that he had only spent a year awake since his revival by Section 31 and now he would soon be returning back to the perpetual darkness. 

"Excuse me your honour." It was at this moment, meanwhile, when Zinalya stood up from her seat in the area behind him, making all eyes in the room turn towards her. "Before this trial is closed, there’s something I’d like to add."

"By all means, Miss Hamilton." She then took a deep breath through her nose and commanded her legs to propel herself forwards, walking down through the seating section and onto the main floor area. 

"What’s she doing?" A puzzled Lieutenant Sulu whispered as he leaned across towards Chekov, who was sitting to his left. 

"I don’t know..." Came the reply from the equally confused ensign. 

Zinalya arrived at the witness stand, after which she began to speak, "First off, I’d like to make it clear to everyone here that what I’m about to say is of my _own_ accord, and my own accord alone. I wasn’t threatened, coerced or forced against my will in any way to say it."

"Very well - your statement is noted." The judge nodded in acknowledgement. 

There was no turning back now. "I’d like to suggest an alternative punishment for the defendant’s charges - a substitute sentence: that instead of being put back into stasis, he’s given an exile sentence, so that he and his crew can leave Earth and start a new life together somewhere away from the Federation."

Khan, who was wondering why the security chief was making this public request for the purpose of helping him, fully turned his head sideways to look at her, while there were looks exchanged between some of the other _Enterprise_ officers in addition. 

"What do you hope will be achieved by this suggestion?"

"I believe that Mr. Singh should be given a chance to better himself with his accomplices alongside him; to learn and improve on himself instead of remaining in suspended animation." She answered. "And I've also chosen to go with them in exile, to assist with achieving that end."

A few of the dozens of pairs eyes behind her went somewhat wide.

There was a pause for a moment. "And might I ask what the reason is for your decision to leave and accompany him, lieutenant-commander?"

She, too, took a second, hers being for her to say the words _Oh god_ inside her head. This was because she was now well aware that she was, without a doubt, past the point of return, and that the moment of truth had come for her to reveal what had caused her to covertly seek advice the previous night at the bar: "Because over the last few days, I've been developing feelings for him. To be precise, feelings of the romantic kind."

The people behind her broke into whispers amongst themselves at once, and she couldn't tell what exactly they were saying but the way they came across made it sound like they were anything but pleased. Zinalya risked a quick glance back at them, catching sight of the seven other senior officers with the looks on their faces ranging from displays of shock at the revelation to disbelief; there was no clear pattern between them, but what these shown expressions of theirs all had in common were that, as she suspected, they weren't positive ones, so she could only bear it for a few seconds before turning her attention to Khan instead. The look on his own face was a milder form of surprise, appearing as if he were touched by what she'd just said but nonetheless deeming it as an unexpected development.

"This court will take a recess to deliberate on this new recommendation, and we'll reconvene tomorrow afternoon at fourteen-hundred hours." Zinalya only just managed to register these words as everyone then got up to leave, her only managing to exchange another momentary look with the porcelain-skinned man in black before he was led away by his assigned guards. As she watched the backs of her _Enterprise_ comrades soon vanish into the dispersing crowd, she felt like those short seconds in which she saw the expressions they were showing was going to haunt her and not cease with this anytime soon.


	3. Chapter 3 ~ How Dare You

"We're not seriously gonna let her do this are we?" Said the CMO. 

"I think we should. I mean it’s her choice, so if she’s certain that it’s what she wants to do then us trying to stop her’s just not right." Scotty replied.

"What is also not right, Mr. Scott, is to allow lieutenant-commander Hamilton to make that choice and thereby ultimately risk her life at the hands of Khan if she does decide to accompany him in exile." Spock, afterwards, added his own viewpoint. "I am in agreement with Dr. McCoy."

Bones himself momentarily looked off into the distance in reaction to this second sentence. "Still one of the most uncomfortable things I’ve heard in a while."

They and the other five senior crewmembers, which was except for the woman in question and included Carol, were currently gathered together in one of the court building’s empty conference rooms several floors up, all standing in various places around this room in equally varying positions. Some of them were leaning against the wall, others weren’t, some had their arms crossed and the rest instead had them at their sides, during which the cold, white sunlight outside touched, essentially, every surface in sight. 

"Chekov, what are you thinking about this?" Kirk asked this ensign.

Pavel appeared to be somewhat hesitant and anxious about providing his answer, but responded after a second or two with, "I agree with Mr. Scott, sir - if Zinalya wants to do this then I don’t think we should stop her."

"I personally don’t know which side to take in this." Said Sulu. "We’ve all seen what Khan can do and what he _has_ done, and I’m as worried about her as the rest of you, but at the same time if she thinks she can help to change him by going with him then we should at least let her try."

"So you’re on the fence?" Said Jim. 

"Yes sir."

The captain sighed quietly to himself, in agreement with these points which had just been mentioned and having realised around a minute prior that this was what Zinalya's request for advice the previous evening regarding a "transfer" had really been about. "To be honest with you I’m feeling the same way. I'm on the fence too."

"And me." Uhura nodded her head.

"And me." Carol additionally contributed to the discussion. 

"Khan is a highly dangerous man, Doctor; a dangerous man who should not be permitted to leave the Federation with one of Starfleet’s own officers." As Spock put in another point in reply to the blonde woman, it was after this sentence was spoken when, in the doorway behind him, the burgundy haired one who was the subject of all these different sides of the argument suddenly turned up. "Such a course of action would not only mean he has caused her to leave behind a career she has been building on for several years, but will also bring disrepute to Starfleet and put the Federation’s trust in us at risk."

During this, Scotty, Pavel and the others who had the doorway in their line of sight looked at where Zinalya was standing with surprise at her appearance and with a little bit of a desire for her not to have been there to hear Spock. Regardless of the matter at hand, they all still didn’t want to offend her if they could avoid it.   
It took a moment of silence for Spock to realise that they were looking behind him at something, to which he turned around to see that she was indeed standing right there. He opened his mouth ever so slightly upon seeing her, as if he was about to say something but didn't know what, and his abrupt realisation was being channelled through the look in his eyes.

Zinalya snorted derisively through her nose at this expression upon his face and fully entered into the room. "No, it's okay, just carry on like I'm not even here why don't you?" She didn't show it externally, but she did feel a tiny twinge of guilt at the way she'd spoken, as she was usually a mild-mannered enough person.

Spock finally managed to pose the question, "What is it that you see in Khan which makes him so endearing to you?"

"Why I’ve got feelings for him?"

"Yes."

Now it was her turn to be stumped for what to say next. "Because I don’t fully know why, but I feel a little like he’s lonely, and like he’s been through a lot because of admiral Marcus." She answered calmly. 

"Oh yeah? And _whose_ fault is it that Marcus can’t be brought to answer for what he’s done?" Said McCoy, to which a look of painful recollection crossed Carol’s features for only a second. Despite her clearly expressing her shame beforehand for this admiral to be her father, she could nonetheless oh so vividly remember the sound of his skull being split by Khan and the way in which the latter conveyed his final words to him, _You should have let me sleep_. 

"My decision still stands: I do wanna go with him if they do give him the exile sentence instead of putting him back into stasis." Zinalya said firmly in answer. 

The doctor’s eyes narrowed and his jaws tensed up. "Are you out of your bagel-fed mind? God only knows what Khan’ll do to you!"

"You weren’t there when he was crying back on the _Enterprise_. He was talking about how everyone he had left who he knew and who mattered to him were used against him and most probably killed by then, and he only cried one tear - he was hurting and he still didn’t know how to express it and get it all out. He’s a troubled man, Bones."

"You sound like you’re his goddamn _therapist_..." He commented to himself, which caused the previously placid and collected Zinalya to suddenly feel a surge of irritation coursing through her body. 

"If Khan wanted to hurt me, he would’ve already done it by now." She snarled back through gritted teeth. Pavel turned to look at Scotty, both of them beginning to experience concern at the rising tension between their friend and the Southern doctor. "Somebody with his capabilities would've just done whatever the hell they wanted with no restraint."

"That does not excuse his actions which he _has_ committed, which include the deaths of admiral Pike and the numerous others from the bombing of the Kelvin Memorial Archive and the USS _Vengeance_ 's crash into San Francisco." Said Spock. "And even of the captain."

"Yeah, we're all _very_ well aware of how you handled that one." Zinalya, unblinking and with the stony expression on her face still present, responded, recalling one of her own memories of Khan, on that day they were referring to, getting practically dragged through the _Enterprise_ with several gashes across his face and with a broken right arm, and the way Uhura described Spock's rage-fuelled fight against him which caused these injuries. Jim, the revived man himself, was now feeling the same concern at the conversation's growing friction that Scotty and Chekov were.

"Is it absolutely definite that you want to leave with him, lassie?" This chief engineer enquired.

"It is." She nodded.

"There you go then, case closed." Scotty was attempting to finish the discussion so that the source of the almost tangible tension would be cut off.

"It's not just 'case closed'!" Retorted McCoy, before turning his attention back towards the security chief and raising his voice. "Dammit Zin, we're trying to help you out here! Do you wanna end up dead or something?!"

"No of course I don't, but it's nice to be allowed to have a _choice_!" She snapped back.

"You mean like how you've got the choice of having a relationship and maybe even settling down with pretty much _any_ guy out there that you want, any _actually_ good enough guys out there in the world and in the whole damn Federation, and you picked _**Khan** , _a guy who's basically a _murderous ass_?" He hissed aggressively.

Zinalya fell silent after this was said, matching what the others had already been doing during the last few seconds. And then some moments later, without hesitation, she marched across the room towards Bones and slapped him across the face. Hard.

Everyone's eyes widened, with Kirk, in addition, even doing a brief whistle in this same surprise. Bones' head had been jerked back to one side by the force of the slap, and while he looked back with incredulity at Zinalya, who was now only a few inches in front of him, he spent about half a second using his fingertips on one hand for feeling the area of his left cheek where he'd been hit.

"How dare you." Her voice was only just higher than a whisper, during which her features morphed into a full, deadly glare and the volume of her voice then kicked up again by several notches to the point where she was now shouting at him. " ** _How dare you_** dictate who I can and can't like and what I can and can't think about someone!"  
Feeling as if she'd been betrayed by a man who was supposed to be one of her trusted comrades, it was immediately after she'd finished speaking when Zinalya turned around and stormed back out of the room and away down the corridor, leaving the others with a range of different emotions but with the main one being shock at what had just taken place.


	4. Chapter 4 ~ Khan's Past

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tanvir is the only aspect of Khan’s backstory that I came up with all by myself. There are a couple of tweaks here and there but the rest is courtesy of sources from the Khan comic series. Either way, his past was still at least a bit sad even in these comics’ own backstory explanation.  
> Also, yes, near to the end the conversation between him and Zinalya was inspired a little bit by the kiss scene between Lucy and Kouta from Elfen Lied, because I feel sort of like Khan is the Lucy of STID.

Zinalya was almost flying down the corridors and then onto the ground floor via a turbolift, filled with her now released anger at Dr. McCoy. He had no right to be telling her how she was allowed to feel about someone, and her blood additionally boiled at the recollection of what she’d walked in to hear Spock saying earlier on before that, about how her plan to get Khan sent away with an exile sentence and go with him - and she guessed that the former also meant this about her feelings for the latter in the first place - would bring disrepute to Starfleet. According to Bones, he and the others were trying to help her, but she couldn’t help but feel in the back of her mind that this was a lie, as he and Spock clearly didn’t _actually_ care about what she wanted or how she felt because she was obviously the only one out of the three of them who could be bothered to look past Khan’s exterior for what lay underneath. This reminded her of a phrase she’d heard of once: _If you look for the good in people, you’ll find it_.   
She was thankful for the fact that Scotty and Chekov were supportive of her wanting to leave with him - further proof to her that, as always, they were good friends - and she knew that while Kirk, Carol, Sulu and Uhura were remaining neutral and hadn’t picked either side of the argument, this could have been worse, due to the fact that one of these two sides they could have picked was to shut down and oppose her plan entirely, like Spock and McCoy. In spite of her annoyance at this latter pair, though, she felt the same kind of twinge as she had during her sarcastic remark to Spock when she’d walked in and heard him, which was guilt for the hostile moments of her behaviour just now. Especially for the particular moment when she slapped Bones. But this was only a temporary twinge as, with another surge of her blood boiling, she remembered that, effectively, they’d disregarded her viewpoints in the conversation and insisted on wanting to keep her away from the man she liked. 

Within another few seconds, she’d arrived at the place where she’d been heading as soon as she stormed out.  
The room where Khan was being held in another cell. 

The retinal and fingerprint scanners outside this room both recognised that she was indeed lieutenant-commander Zinalya Hamilton and allowed her to enter as a result. What she immediately noticed upon doing so was that apart from a few guards near to the door on the outer side, there were none inside the room itself, which she initially found to be a relief because of her wanting to speak alone with him until she found out why: to her right, in the corner of the ceiling above her, was a tiny, spherical-shaped black glass object which could only be noticed if you put in effort thanks to this size. It hardly took a detective to deduce that it was meant to be some kind of security camera. 

"Did you mean it?"

She was suddenly snapped out of looking up at the camera by a certain deep and English-accented voice from in front of where she was standing. There he was, in a cell with a large floor-length glass window not unlike that of his previous cell onboard the _Enterprise_. Even the colouring of the room as a whole was very similar, except this one was slightly more like grey with a blue tint as opposed to pure white. "Sorry, what?" She turned her head back to facing where he was sitting at the back of his cell, looking at her with an owllike unwavering gaze, during which she found her anger from a minute ago fading.

"Did you mean what you said earlier in the courtroom, Miss Hamilton?" The sound of Khan’s voice still gave her shivers despite the amount of times she’d already heard it. "When you declared that you have romantic feelings for me?"

"I did, yeah." She nodded her head and simultaneously walked closer towards the cell. It took that little fraction of less time compared to on the _Enterprise_ due to the room being marginally smaller than this ship’s brig.   
  
He now once again had the same look on his face that he’d had before, when she’d made this announcement he was referring to: a little dash of curiosity and slight skepticism but predominantly feeling touched by what she said. "Why do you have those feelings?"

Zinalya chuckled to herself. "I’m obviously not going to catch a break from that question anytime soon." When she saw his aforementioned expression change into one of mild confusion, she elaborated, "Commander Spock asked me the same thing just now."

"And what did you say to him?" Another one of those subtle outward expression shifts happened, this time her sensing slight dislike from Khan towards this half Vulcan first officer. 

"I told him that I’m not entirely sure why, but it was partially because I felt like you’d been through an emotional rollercoaster, with all the admiral Marcus business." Zinalya replied, hesitant to bring up this subject. She and Khan were now standing right in front of each other, only about a foot apart on either side of the cell’s glass. 

He momentarily laughed to himself through closed lips and craned his head to the side, looking down at the floor. "I take it I’d be right in presuming he and your other colleagues tried to convince you that the way you see me is a mistake?"

"Spock and Dr. McCoy did." Responded the half human-half Trill. "But not all of them were like that; the others haven’t taken a side but ensign Chekov and Mr. Scott are being supportive of it."

"You seem to trust those two a great deal."

"They’re my closest friends." Her inner sensation of gratitude and relief at their support swung into action again, because she remembered that this meant she was at least not fully alone in her plan and in that day’s developments. 

Khan looked back up towards her, seeming as if he himself had just experienced a memory recollection of his own. He paused for a beat, and then spoke again, "I’d like you to know I feel the same way, Miss Hamilton; I find you endearing in return."

It was a surprise to her ears, because, after all, she was hoping that her emotions would indeed be reciprocated by him but the prospect of it actually, really happening was unexpected, so now it was her turn to pose the question, "Why?"

"Because from the people who I met and interacted with on your _Enterprise_ , you appeared to be the only one who didn’t dismiss me as a mere criminal." Answered Khan, whose eyes she thought were like that of a snake due to the brightness of his light turquoise eyes, which made his pupils, at some moments, look as if they were slitted. She’d additionally used this time where they were in front of each other to mentally take in and properly admire every edge of his tall body and his immaculate black hair. "You only came to speak to me a few times, but during those instances I noticed that you behaved kindly towards me. Apart from this reason however I’m not certain myself: I like you in return for a reason that I can’t put my finger on either."

Zinalya thought to herself deeply about this weirdly complex concept of attraction. "Maybe we’re not _supposed_ to understand why we’ve got feelings for each other. Do you believe in destiny?"

"It depends on the specific context." Said Khan. 

"Well I think the bigger reason could be because it’s pre-destined and it literally is what’s meant to happen."

Khan nodded his head, slowly and gracefully, in understanding of this theory. "If we _are_ pre-destined to be together as you say, then I think I should be fully honest with you - I should tell you about how it all began. The events that ultimately led to my revival last year and everything that followed."

"Okay." There came her own nod again. "I do know that at one point back in the 20th century you were a world leader, the head of a large empire, but that's all I know about you, so I would like to learn more." She sat down on the floor in front of the glass, anticipating that what was about to follow might take some time.

Khan quietly took a breath and he, too, sat down, the right side of his body leaning lightly against the glass. "The first four years of my life were rather peaceful - most of the memories I had from back that far became vague over time so I had to find out later on by doing my own research, but I lived during those first years in India, with my mother." He began. "Her name was Dr. Sarina Kaur, a biochemist who had, around that time, been carrying out experiments and investigations into asexual reproduction."

"Asexual reproduction? Like how plants and some insects have children without having to...?" She trailed off at the end, realising how awkward the rest of her sentence was going to be.

"Yes." Khan, luckily, answered what she was trying to query without her having to put in this ending. "I found out when I did my own exploration into the four early years that I was apparently conceived by her via artificial insemination. And it was _entirely_ artificial - she'd managed to perfect her theory of asexual reproduction in human beings, dubbed the Chrysalis Project. I was born in the year 1970, so this was quite a notable scientific achievement for the time." Zinalya was still listening intently, while he continued, now with a feeling of poignancy shown upon his face, "I was initially conceived as another one of her experiments, which is why she gave me minor changes and enhancements in my DNA that created my different eye colour and accent and my light skin tone, allegedly whilst I was still in utero, as well as a small mental enhancement allowing me to recall early memories more easily. But I still remember clearly that once I’d been born, she was the kindest and most loving person I had ever known."

"She sounds like she was a really sweet woman. I think I would've liked to meet her if she was still around today." The lieutenant-commander opined with a gentle smile, knowing in her mind that based on how long ago the 1970s were, Sarina would have been long gone by that time. 

"She was. When I was still very young, she had a pet dog named Cinder, a border collie I believe; he had already reached old age when I was born and he died when I was two years old, but before then it was just me, Cinder and my mother together in New Delhi as a family. And then one day, another two years later, I found out that she died, as well."

"What happened to her?"

"Something went wrong at her laboratory. It caused a fire which she was killed by as she tried to escape." He said. "I'd been out that day, playing in the streets with some of the other children who lived nearby. Her parents lived in Kolkata, meaning there was no one close enough to take care of me, so I spent the next year living on those streets. The first few days I spent moving from place to place with my blanket in my hands and I spent most of those nights crying until I cried myself to sleep." Zinalya felt her chest tighten at the sight of the wistful look in his eyes. "Until I met another boy, Tanvir Acharya. He was three years older than me and was also an orphan on the streets, and was the leader of a small group of others which he allowed me to join. Me and him became friends to the point where we both considered each other as a brother figure, but a year on, we and the rest of the group were taken, among numerous other orphans, for experimentation."

"Is that what made you into an Augment? What gave you all your abilities?"

"It was - there was a total of twenty-four boys including myself and fifteen girls who were subjected to genetic engineering over the course of several years, for the purpose of eventually becoming living weapons. Seven years after our capture, in 1982, Tanvir and I devised a plan to escape and then later come back in the hopes of liberating the others in addition, and we both ran off in different directions. I made it to the Gobi Desert before I was found by Dr. Heisen, the director of the eugenics project responsible for our augmentations, and was recaptured and returned to the research facility by the use of a neural inhibitor in my body, which doubled as a tracking beacon. All thirty-nine of us had each been implanted with one for controlling us with pain if need be." The wistful expression began to gradually amplify itself. "After I was returned, I discovered that Tanvir had also been recaptured, but the use of his own inhibitor had killed him: he was born with a heart defect which was never treated, so the electric shocks from his inhibitor had stopped his heart from beating." He remembered how truly awful he’d felt at this moment way back when - a twelve year old boy holding the corpse of his best friend, his older brother figure, in his arms and entering back into what he did during those first few lonely nights on the New Delhi streets, which was crying his eyes out. 

"Oh god..." Said Zinalya. 

"Three more years on from then, I successfully removed my own inhibitor and those of the others and killed Heisen myself." He moved on from this particular part of the story before he lost himself in the memory, hissing the sentence with a small edge of aggression in his tone. "From there, we escaped and gradually released other eugenics subjects in various countries across the world, and I imagine the rest is familiar to you."

"You set up your empire in the early 1990s and ruled over half of Earth." She confirmed. "Before you escaped the planet with seventy-two other Augments later."

"It was our belief that the rest of the human race couldn’t properly look after itself. Myself and a few others infiltrated world governments in 1990 and established our own, leading to the beginning of the Eugenics Wars in 1992. It was during this time when I did my research into the finer details of my origins, and one of the other things I eventually uncovered was my mother's naming process for me: I was named Khan after one of her grandfathers, she gave me my surname after the 15th century poet Singh el Bashir, and my middle name was after Noonien Prasad, her boyfriend who died from lung cancer while she was pregnant with me. We were attacked during my reign that followed by the non-Augment governments and threatened with nuclear weaponry, but I refused to retaliate with mine."

"I remember; you told me once on the _Enterprise_ that yours was one of the few Augment government where there wasn’t anything like genocide or the other worst parts of a dictatorship." Zinalya, who was currently leaning the back of her own body against the glass, stretched her legs out so that she was sitting with them in front of her and craned her head around to look at him. "You had the threat of total destruction over you and you still stood your ground without using the same weapons..."

"At one point, me and my own followers were also attacked by another Augment leader, although as you can see I was the one who won the battle." She could see his eyes becoming misty at this point. "But my leadership still almost cost me everyone I knew throughout this last year. In 1996, we were forced to flee to Australia and board a sleeper ship which we christened as the SS _Botany Bay_ , and then came Marcus' discovery of us." A tear slid ever so slowly down out of his left eye while the other one was still welling up. "If it is destiny which has brought me here to you in this time, then it must have a perverse way of thinking. I'm not certain whether or not I should be thankful for those circumstances."

"I'm so sorry." The security chief was finding his tears to be contagious. "I wish me and the others knew what was going on - he was manipulating you and threatening to take away every person you had left who mattered to you, and we did nothing..."

"You mustn't blame yourself, Zinalya." Khan turned to face her slightly more, and then came the tear from his right eye to match the one on his left cheek. "I'm sorry that I've gotten us into this current situation." He placed his index and middle fingertips from his left hand onto the surface of his side of the glass to indicate what he meant: they were separated from each other by nothing more than a thin material, and faced with the uncertainty of whether they'd be allowed to go into exile together or be well and truly separated indefinitely.

She gently shook her head and did the same with that of her right hand, turning her position herself to make it so that it was the left side of her body up against the glass instead of her back, as it had been previously. "It's okay. I know half your life's been hard - you didn't deserve those deaths of Tanvir or your mum, Khan. You didn't deserve any of the bad things that happened to you at all." Hers were somewhat more free-flowing compared to his, but Khan and Zin just let their tears stream out in each other's company. The former shifted his position again in terms of how his head was inclined, which now made it look to anyone seeing it from in front of or behind them like they were leaning into each other with her head on his shoulder and his own head on the top of hers. They sat there for a while, in a silence laced with unspoken tenderness between them.


	5. Chapter 5 ~ The Father of the Moth Woman

The afternoon arrived and kicked into action some hours on from Khan’s revelation of his origins and his childhood, with which Zinalya had been spending the last few minutes ambling aimlessly around the San Francisco harbour, taking this time after the aforementioned heart to heart that he’d shared with her to clear her mind, both from her mostly latent concerns about the current situation as a whole and from the tears she had shed during their conversation. She had her hands on a metallic railing lining the edge of the pavement where she was standing, this edge being the one that was nearest to the smooth, visually calming surface of the waters taking up the harbour; the railing's own surface was cold to the touch right now, but this was another thing in her environment that felt calming.

Off in the distance, standing by a set of buildings as a group, were Jim, Spock and Nyota, who were all watching as Zinalya took her hands off of the railing after a few seconds and began walking again, down the pavement. She was hardly difficult to see in the crowd, thanks to her burgundy hair colour.

"It kinda makes you think..." Uhura pondered out loud.

Spock turned his head to look at her. "About what?"

"About all this she's doing: she's willing to leave behind all she's ever known, her family, her job, everything, so that she can be with the man she loves." Answered the communications officer. "It makes you think about how much it means she loves Khan."

"She also might be making a mistake driven by allowing her passionate emotions to get the better of her."

"Way to kill the mood, Spock." Kirk remarked with a small laugh. 

"People can make decisions regarding feelings of love without logical or rational thought of any kind." The half Vulcan hybrid responded, sticking to the point he was trying to put across as he continued to watch Zinalya gradually walk away, off into the part of the harbour’s crowd too far away to be seen, with the other two next to him still also observing her vanish. "I am aware that, in some cases, choices made in the name of romance can be for the greater good of both people involved, but in the other instances, their feelings can impair their judgement and therefore lead them into making _harmful_ decisions."

"I’ve got a hell of a lot of my own doubts about her going away with him too, but it’s not our business to separate them knowingly." Responded the captain. "It’s like what we all heard Zin herself say to Bones earlier: we can’t dictate who she’s allowed to have the feelings for, so that means we can’t try to keep them apart."

"And we all saw what she’ll do to anybody that tries." Commented lieutenant Uhura jokingly. 

"What additionally concerns me, however, is the possibility of Khan’s way of thinking and his ideals and mindsets being transferred to her." Said Spock. 

"You’re worried about him being a bad influence on Zinalya?" Queried his girlfriend, for confirmation on whether what she thought she just heard was true. 

"In a manner of speaking, yes."

"Now you’re starting to sound like you’re her father." Opined Jim, in the same manner as his remark a few moments ago. 

"But the thing is it's like Romeo and Juliet: I'm not saying we have to be in full support of what she wants to do either, but Romeo and Juliet were two lovers who were forbidden from being together by almost everybody they knew, and in the end it caused them both to commit suicide." Nyota added. "So if we try to get involved and stop those two from being together then we could basically just end up making it worse."

"As I recall, the ultimate fate of Romeo and Juliet was additionally implied to be because of their over-eagerness in progressing their relationship and not wanting to wait to find a more suitable and less dangerous environment before commencing marriage to each other."

"Spock, remind me never to let you start writing literature." Jim put in another of his remarks to his friend.

Almost another half hour on from that moment, the half Trill in question had made it back to her apartment, where upon entering she promptly sat down in one of the armchairs that she’d made use of last night when she was still pondering on whether or not to put her plan into action. Before she did indeed obey her impulses and set everything that had taken place that day into motion. However, this time she was in an at least somewhat better mood due to her feelings of closure at having gotten it off her chest and not having to hide it anymore like she'd been doing for the last several days before this one.

Suddenly, her attention was grabbed as her communicator in her pocket chirped, which she flipped open. "Go ahead."

"It's me." There came the sound of Sulu's voice on the other end of the line. "I called to tell you that your parents have just started trying to give you a call, ma'am."

"Okay. Thanks for letting me know, I'll talk to you later." Zinalya acknowledged before then closing the device again and, begrudgingly, got up and walked into her bedroom, where there was a wall-mounted screen on which her video calls could be held. She already had the words _Oh god..._ running through her head - if the opinions and controversy she'd faced from her _crewmates_ regarding her feelings for Khan so far were bad, that of her family was bound to be a whole lot worse.  
She psyched herself up for a moment and then pressed the button on the controller pad nearby which would open up the incoming video call, and there they were. Her parents. Mason Hamilton was a human who used to work as a Starfleet adjutant, with Zinalya's hazel-green eyes and short, mousy brown hair, and her mother, Siazru Tebal, was a joined Trill and the fourth host of the Tebal symbiont working as an architect's executive on Earth, and was so far the first and only female one out of the Tebal hosts. She had shoulder length dark dark grey hair with a burgundy tint, entirely brown eyes and, due to being fully Trill, she had a lot more of this race's distinctive spots compared to Zin.

"Hello Zinalya." Siazru greeted.

"Hi you two." She responded. _Here it comes..._

"We’ve heard about what you said this morning in the Khan Noonien Singh trial." Mason said after a second of working out what to say next. _...And there it is._

Their hybrid daughter allowed herself a small chuckle. "News obviously travels from pretty quickly."

Her father nodded his head, his expression turning serious and steely. "It does." He continued, "Now, my million dollar question is: what the hell were you thinking?"

" _Mason_." His wife hissed to him, attempting to do this discretely. 

Zinalya slowly crossed her arms. "How do you mean?"

"What was going through your brain when you said that? When you decided that you were in love with a terrorist?" He spat back. 

"I thought you agreed you were going to be casual and cautious about this." Siazru did a mental facepalm. 

"I didn’t just _decide_ , dad." Replied Zin. "I didn’t think about it or pre-plan how I feel, I just spoke out what was in my heart. I went with what my gut was telling me."

"You didn’t think about it? That’s even _worse_!" Exclaimed Mason. "So you’re _willy-nilly_ becoming the girlfriend of a criminal?"

"I’m not going to say anything cliché like ‘the heart wants what it wants’, but I just like him, simple as that. It’s something I can’t even put in words."

"And she said she wasn’t gonna say any clichés." He snorted derisively to himself. 

"This is the reason why I was hesitant to answer your call - I just _knew_ you were going to be like this." Zinalya snapped at this. "I was beginning to understand a little bit about why some of my _crewmates_ might be sceptical, but _you_ not supporting my decision is a whole different ball game!"

"I don’t mind what you do in life as long as it means you’re safe and happy!" Her father yelled back. "And going off on an exile with a killer is _not_ what qualifies as safe!"

"Oh so you’re okay with me being safe but not being happy. In fact, you know what? If the man I like is such a big problem to you then why don’t you just disown me, dad?!"

"I don’t want to disown you Zinalya, I just want you to make choices that are best for your own good! You’re our daughter, which means we _love_ you and we don’t want you to throw away your future like this!" Shouted Mason. 

"I’m not throwing anything away, I’m just exchanging one future for another." She gripped the bridge of her nose with her right hand.

"For a future where you spend it all with a _**murderer**_!" He retorted, at his highest volume yet during the conversation. "Whether you like it or not, I have to get this point into your head _so that I can damn well **help** you_!"

"YOU’RE _NOT_ HELPING ME! SCOTTY AND PAVEL ARE THE ONLY ONES WHO’VE ACTUALLY LISTENED TO ME AND ARE SUPPORTING ME IN THIS AND THEY’RE NOT MY _FAMILY_!" Her building anger having finally reached its ultimate boiling point, Zinalya blew up at her father without any warning, silencing him immediately and releasing her pent-up frustrations about the matter. "YOU'RE SAYING IT'S FOR THE BEST BUT IT'S _NOT_! APART FROM PAVEL AND SCOTTY NONE OF YOU REALLY _DO_ CARE ABOUT HOW I FEEL! IF YOU DID THEN YOU'D UNDERSTAND THAT THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO DO! _I WANT TO BE WITH KHAN_!"

Once she had finished screaming, she stopped to take a deep breath to at least calm herself down to a small degree, facing away from the image of her stunned-into-silence father and equally surprised mother as tiny tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. There was still a hint of his own annoyance at the situation on his face but for the most part, Mason was visibly regretful that he'd caused this reaction from his daughter.

Siazru gently asked another moment on, "What do you like about him, if there is anything particular? Is there anything specific that caused these feelings for him in the first place?"

Zinalya blinked several times, before turning back around again to face them and giving her answer. "He's not just some cold-blooded murderer. He has feelings of longing, and regret, and sadness, like the rest of us." She sniffed. "He said he basically only ever had a normal, happy childhood during the first four years of his life, and then after that he was treated as a lab rat for most of the rest of it. As some kind of ongoing project that needed to be improved on and tested and controlled. And when he was woken up last year, he and his friends had ran so far and so fast from the threat of being wiped out altogether, and he was manipulated by the threat of every one of them being killed for the purpose of an admiral starting a war and getting personal glory for himself. An admiral who'd forgotten what the Federation stands for and managed to manipulate Khan into believing that everybody he had left in his life _had_ been killed. He was scared, and people lash out when they get scared enough."

"I see." Siazru nodded in understanding, while her husband bit his lip slightly in his still fresh remorse.

"When I first started having my feelings for him on the _Enterprise_ , I was doubtful too; I was worried about what it meant for me to feel that way about a man deemed as a criminal." The youngest of their three children continued. "But then I started to find out that he's not how he seems. I've also got a theory that it's the work of destiny, and that we don't really need to understand why we like each other and the only thing we do need is to be grateful for it. In fact, let me explain this in a different way: let's say, just for argument's sake, that Khan was a moth. As in like some kind of humanoid moth-like creature called the Moth Man." Her parents both nodded, wondering where she was going with this metaphor, as she then directly addressed Mason, "Well, the thing is, dad, you're the father of the Moth _Woman_. What I'm trying to say is, I don't know how it happened but me and him are _made_ for each other." A beat passed, and then she finished with, "He's gentle underneath all that stuff on the surface, and I am still very open and comfortable with Scotty and Pavel because they are still my friends, but when I'm with him I feel even more like that. Being with him sometimes makes me feel like I wanna dance or burst into song, and the way he looks at me... it's like he's looking deep into me and realising that he can trust me. He only shows it on the outside a little bit, but when Khan sees me, his eyes light up, too, like he's trying to be welcoming. So now I can either try to save him, so that we can be together somewhere, or just let him be put back into stasis forever. It's a simple question of do I dare to try or don't I, and I've decided that I do."


	6. Chapter 6 ~ The Final Verdict

The day cycled on from there until there was none of it left, stretching on into the late morning of the next one; prior to which Zinalya hadn't gone as far this time but she once again took another walk for clearing out the background noise and concerns in her mind, like she had done yesterday.  
Today was the day. As in _the_ day. The time for the outcome of her plan to be revealed - whether or not Khan's sentence was going to be exile or stasis.  
Whether or not she would be allowed to run away with him or he would be condemned to a perpetual sleep.

There was only four hours to go until this moment of revelation would come. Now, I know four hours is a long time and as a result I wouldn't blame you at all if you ignored a request to sit in your bedroom and do nothing but count to four hours. However, four hours can sometimes seem like a short time to people, because it's an indication of the clock ticking and their time running out, especially when what was to happen at the end of those hours was an event that would decide the future of a person, or sometimes more than one person, and the rest of their life (or lives) as a whole.

Zinalya was at the end of this second amble of hers and was currently walking down the street on which her apartment building sat, surrounded by crowds of other pavement walkers. After she gave the best explanation that she could about her love for Khan to her parents the previous afternoon, she had managed to reverse the way her and her father had interacted during the conversation until then: before this opening-up of hers, he'd been very angry and heavily concerned that his daughter was putting herself in danger by wanting to be with Khan for God knows how long, but after she blew up at him and gave this full explanation for the points that she was able to put into words, he had become more understanding of her plight and the two successfully reconciled after some more discussion.

In the present moment, she had almost reached the apartment building when she noticed a familiar face coming towards her further down the street ahead. Scotty. And then as he drew nearer, what she also noticed was that there was someone else accompanying him, who she soon saw to be Chekov.

"Hey you two." She greeted them when they came close enough to her.

"Hello." Pavel responded amicably.

"Morning Zinalya." Added Scotty in the same manner, during which the three all stepped off to the side, right next to another building, so that their conversation wouldn't take up the pavement. "What're you doing out here?"

"I thought I'd take in the air while I had time to kill." Replied Zinalya, looking out in front of her with a faraway gaze.

The pair picked up on this look in her eyes straight away, to which the engineer who'd previously spoken asked, "Have you been thinking about all this? About Khan?"

"Yeah." She nodded. "It's not as big as the worries I had before this all happened, before I announced my feelings yesterday, I mean, but there's still that little nagging voice in the back of my head telling me that what I'm doing is wrong. I know it's not true, especially since my parents are willing to be supportive of this, but I kinda feel like it's damaged things between me and the others." It was a fairly weird feeling: she was both guilty about the moment when she slapped Bones the previous day and simultaneously glad that she did, as at the time it seemed like it was the only way she was going to be able to get her point across to him. As a result of this discussion which had caused it, neither she nor Bones had spoken to each other since, and she also wasn’t speaking to Spock either. 

"You’re right, it’s not true! There’s been no damage done." Chekov shook his head in reassurance. "In fact I heard yesterday that Lieutenant Uhura was telling the captain and Mr. Spock about how stopping you from doing this would be a bad idea. She might be staying neutral on the matter but that still means she doesn’t wish anything bad on you."

"Exactly." Agreed Scotty. "The laddie’s right, and as for Dr. McCoy, he just got a bit wound up - he’ll come around soon, just wait and see! And you know what Spock’s like, he’s bound to do the same."

"So you don’t think I am on my own in this? I know you pair are on my side but right after I revealed it yesterday I was worried that I was gonna end up alone in the matter, and I suppose that thought’s coming back to haunt me a little." Said Zin.

"No, of course not! Even if things end up never being the same between you and Spock and the doctor, which is very unlikely, by the way, you’ve still got us."

"And you also said just now that you have your parents supporting you." Pavel additionally contributed. "So there will be always be someone on your side, Zinalya. Including us."

To hear these words spoken out loud was at least a partial relief to her. "Thanks you guys, that’s kind of you to say. I appreciate it."

"The three of us are friends, lassie - it’s our job." Scotty and Chekov both mirrored her grateful expression with their own smiles.

Zinalya and this pair were already seated in the stands at the back of the courtroom when the others, as 2 PM rolled round at last, started filing in with various other audience members. First came Nyota with Spock, who Zin only gave a fleeting glance towards, and then there was Hikaru and Jim, with Carol following close behind. Then finally there was Bones, who looked at the security chief with a somewhat stony demeanor in his eyes; she gave him a quick but frosty stare in return. These six who came in all walked either past the trio who were already there, onto the row behind them or next to them on the side nearest to the aisle they entered on.

In addition, Khan was present at the front once again, and, also once again as you might have guessed, there were metallic forearm handcuffs and guards involved. This time when he came into the room, though, the looks that he and Zinalya exchanged with each other weren't ones of looking into one another in the hopes of decoding the complexities of their feelings - they were now instead ones of a newfound level of warm understanding between the two of them. 

"This court has been called to order to draw a conclusion to the trial of Khan Noonien Singh." The judge spoke out. "Miss Zinalya Chloe Hamilton, step forward please." She complied with this request, getting up out of her seat and making her way towards the front, everyone's eyes on her. While people were still filing in about a minute ago, she could hear a large majority of them whispering to each other after giving what she noticed to be quick glimpses. Spock, also watching the back of her head, thought on Uhura's words from yesterday afternoon as he had also done shortly after this instance itself. "Do you understand that by consenting yourself to accompany Mr. Singh in your recommended exile sentence, you will also be subject to an exile of your own and therefore not be a citizen of the United Federation of Planets during that time?"

She nodded, keeping her head and shoulders held up confidently, even though it was an understatement to say that she had butterflies in her belly. She felt like she practically had an entire conservatory full of them in there. "I understand."

"Very well then." He afterwards addressed the rest of the crowd behind her. "The court has decided to conduct the determination of our final verdict by putting the decision to a consensus: those of you present here today shall participate in a vote for whether or not the defendant and Miss Hunter should be given this sentence of exile." There was a pause for a beat. "All those in favour?"

Now was the moment of truth. Zinalya's breath hitched in her throat in anticipation as she looked up behind her at what the result of this query was going to be, with Khan additionally turning his head for a glance of his own. And then came the hands that were raised.  
Scotty and Pavel were two of the first to raise their hands, and she saw that very soon afterwards, so did Sulu, Uhura, Carol and Kirk and then, to her surprise, Spock did the same. He didn't speak it out loud right now, but this half Vulcan-half human had spent the last few seconds realising the truth in what Nyota had said the previous day - it was indeed the conflict orchestrated by the Montagues and the Capulets regarding Romeo and Juliet's love which caused their untimely deaths and the tragic end to the story, and their eagerness for marriage and progression in their relationship was much, much less responsible. And then there came an even bigger surprise.  
McCoy raised his hand as well.

At the sight of this latter devlopment, Zinalya involuntarily experienced a feeling of relief throughout her mind.  
But now it was time for her to see how many of the other audience members there in that courtroom had also raised their hands in favour...


	7. Chapter 7 (Sad Ending) ~ Never Let Me Go

When she did look around the room in this moment, Zinalya saw that the remainder of the court only had a small handful of others who'd raised their hands in favour of the exile sentence.

Her heart instantly sank without hesitation.

"All those against?" Said the judge, to which the amount of the audience's remainder who raised their hand was about three times that of the ones who had answered in favour.

"No..." She said quietly to herself before she could stop the word from coming out. Khan, of course, noticed this reaction, causing his head to turn away and towards this lieutenant-commander instead, his eyes full of concern for both her and for himself. He had only realised that her feelings were mutual yesterday, and it seemed that he was already going to be torn away from her. 

"The results of the vote are certain; Khan Noonien Singh, you are hereby sentenced to be transported to the Starfleet facility Sierra-Lambda 3 where you shall be placed into cryogenic stasis with the remainder of your crew indefinitely."

" _No_..." Zinalya spoke the same word, somewhat louder this time and once more not entirely registering that she had even said it in the first place.

"Guards, take the convicted back to his cell room. This trial is now declared closed." At this, the personnel surrounding the Augment himself did as they were told, causing the pair to only be able to look at one another very, very briefly, whilst everyone behind them got up from their seats and began leaving, with the expressions of her fellow senior officers including Carol showing Khan's same concern. "I'll give you five minutes with him, Miss Hamilton."

It took no more than thirty seconds for her to rush into this same location, the place where they'd shared their heart to heart and the full revelation of his origins and past. She was slightly out of breath due to her having ran at the highest speed her legs would allow, meaning some strands of her hair in a couple of places were strewn around somewhat messily to match.

"I'm sorry, Khan." She'd expected to feel some kind of huge jolt of despair and a feeling of inner stinging pain if the possibility of her plan failing came true, but she was surprised - also inwardly - because instead, her predominant feeling was a different type of sadness which was making her feel as if her limbs had gone numb. "It obviously didn't work. I tried to give us a chance to leave and be together but it didn't work..." She sniffed. "It just didn't work in the end..."

"I'm beginning to think this is some form of new habit of yours: blaming yourself for things that are beyond your control. You did everything you could; there's nothing either of us could have done to prevent this, which means that includes you." He told her while shaking his head in reassurance, after which he walked forwards and put his arms around Zinalya. She wasted no time in putting her own around the back of his torso in return, during which she could have sworn that she momentarily felt his chest tremble up and down to a tiny degree and heard the faintest sound of his breathing becoming slightly hitched and shaky within this same minuscule amount of time, as if he were crying silently and without shedding any tears. Another reminder after yesterday that Khan wasn't as bulletproof as he often seemed.

"What do we do now?" She spoke into his chest as, at this same time, he put his own head on top of hers. "Seriously, what the hell do we do?"

"I don't believe there's anything that we _can_ do without making the matter worse." The man with the black hair and bright, snakelike turquoise eyes replied reluctantly. This revelation of him now being due to be rendered dead to the world made him feel like he was trapped in the marionette strings of admiral Marcus all over again; backed into a corner with no way out from what was going to be. He did also remember to himself that, as he'd said the previous afternoon, it was the acts he'd committed in his quest for vengeance that had gotten him and Zin into this predicament in the first place, but that didn't mean this aforementioned current feeling of entrapment was alleviated in the slightest.

"So I guess this is how it ends..." The female one of the two made her own reluctant admission. "I felt like you and me had such good times to come."

"I had the same thoughts, as well." He gave slow, small nods of his head, and then there came the growing misty sensation in his eyes. "But being with you for these last two days and our moments of conversation on your _Enterprise_ were already good times in themselves. Despite our time together being short, I still cherish it, Zinalya." He paused for a second, reflecting on how he was facing yet another misfortune, this one being because of a complex emotion which he'd developed. "Am I damned? Was this because of my life being placed under some form of curse without me being aware of it?"

"No, of course not, Khan. You're not cursed, or doomed, or anything like that. You might not have had the happiest childhood growing up or the happiest reason for being woken up in this century, but bad things just happen to people without any curses being involved. I am glad that, as you said, I was able to be the source of moments you’re cherishing, though." 

And then he did something that she’d never from him until this second: as she looked up at him while she gave this reply, he afterwards looked back down at her and smiled. Not one of his calculating smiles she’d seen during the incident of his crimes, but a genuine, soft one. "The days where I saw you you were some of the happiest that I’ve known recently."

"And at least we can touch each other this time." Zin added with her own small smile, as on this occasion he was still in this same room of the court building as the glass cell in which he’d been held yesterday, but he wasn’t currently held inside the aforementioned cell itself, which was why they were able to hold one another at this moment. 

Khan pulled her in closer again, him wanting to make the most of this fact as much as she did, and gave her a slow but tender kiss on the side of her forehead. "I’d have no intention of exchanging that for anything right now."   
Then, while her own eyes were reaching their maximum point of welling up in return, a tear flowed freely from his right eye, and then the left in addition a few seconds later.

There was no rush to move apart from each other. The two were going to savour every single second of these last few minutes that they had together, even though Zinalya still knew very well that her plan had been turned to dust right before her eyes. And, with her heart clenching even more tightly than it already had been doing, the answer to the question in her mind well and truly escaped her: how were they supposed to fit the joys of what was supposed to be a lifetime into what was now only about five minutes? 

Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Chekov, Sulu and Carol were all assembled side-by-side on the roof of the building, having just observed Khan being taken away and vanishing out of view, never to see him again. There was obviously somewhat stronger gusts of wind up here, meaning that their hair was been blown about to a degree. 

The last remaining senior officer out of the group appeared behind them, on the other side of the roof. "I was told you guys were up here."

They turned around to see that the look in her eyes was very clearly a sunken one, eventually managing to make out wet outlines underneath them - it reinforced the feeling of concern for her that had already been sitting deep inside themselves. 

"Hello Zinalya." Carol greeted in response, to which the woman she just addressed didn’t give a verbal reply but instead looked back at her and nodded her head for the same purpose. 

"Why did you two vote in favour back there?" The security chief’s voice sounded fractionally monotonous as she briefly looked at Spock and Bones before then diverting her gaze to the wide, open sky around them. 

The former of this pair answered after a moment, "Because it seemed logical to contribute to allowing you to do what you felt was right, as you are a trusted crewmate, lieutenant-commander Hunter."

"The translation is he wanted to help you out because he thinks you’re a good friend." Said Nyota, smiling slightly in a joking manner. 

"And I didn’t wanna hang on to what happened yesterday." Said Bones. Unlike the last time he and the woman he was addressing spoke to each other, his expression wasn’t tight and confrontational: this time, it was full of honest regret. "I didn’t wanna stand in the way of you being happy. I'm sorry Zin, I said some things that were way outta line."

"It's okay." She managed to curl one corner of her mouth into a friendly smile. "Sorry I slapped you."

The doctor raised one hand in reassurance. "It's alright, if I was in your shoes I probably would've done the same thing."

But now that these apologies were finished, the present situation came flooding back to her: Khan was gone, taken away to be put into an eternal sleep, and he was never coming back. Without being able to help herself, Zinalya took in a breath as both of her eyes simultaneously released another pent up tear each, to which Scotty approached and hugged her, gently patting her shoulder with one of his hands. She appreciated this comfort he had just begun to provide her with, but if she was to be honest with herself, it simply wasn't the same as the loving kind that she'd been given a few minutes ago by the man whose absence was causing her this newfound pain.  
In that moment, the hope and optimism within her vanished.


	8. Chapter 7 (Happy Ending) ~ To Be Where You Are

When she did look around the room in this moment, Zinalya saw that the remainder of the court only had several others who'd raised their hands in favour of the exile sentence. Specifically, so many others that there seemed to be about two thirds of them who had taken this side of the argument.

"Oh my god." She gasped to herself, her voice's volume still kept low, before she fully registered that she'd spoken at all.

"All those against?"

As she had just presumed, the others in the audience who now raised their hands in opposition to the success of her plan only took up the last remaining third - upon seeing this, her heart leapt up even higher.  
"Oh my god..." The words slipped out from her lips once more without her meaning for them to do so. "It worked..."

"The results of the vote are certain; Khan Noonien Singh, you are hereby sentenced to twenty years of exile on the planet designated Ceti Alpha V, and Miss Zinalya Chloe Hamilton, you are sentenced to accompany him for your own sentence of ten years. The convicted shall now be released into the custody of yourself and the rest of the USS _Enterprise_ 's senior personnel for transport to this planet, during which any further offences committed by him you will be declared as personally accountable for. This trial is now declared closed." At this, a wave of noise descended upon the room as everyone got up from their seats to leave, now that the matter was all done and over with.

"Scotty, how long do you think it'll take you to get the ship up and running again?" Jim asked this chief engineer as they walked out with the others.

"If I get everyone from the rest of my team working on it we should be able to get going in four days' time, give or take."

"Okay. Get to it as soon as you can." The captain nodded in acknowledgement.

"Aye, sir, I will do." He, Kirk and the other senior officers all experienced a wave of relief for Zinalya now that her alternative sentence recommendation had been fully accepted.

It was a minute on, or somewhat less, when the two who this development itself revolved around had gone up to the roof. A place where they could truly be alone.

"So... we did it?" She looked up at him, some strands of both his and her own hair fluttering about in the breeze up here.

"It seems that we did." Khan gave a nod of his head as he gave this reply. Zinalya didn’t think she’d ever stop getting warm shivers at the sound of his baritone voice. 

"And basically for the next few days I’m supposed to be your babysitter, from the sound of it." The burgundy haired woman joked with a small chuckle. 

"I can think of several outcomes and scenarios which would’ve been much more undesirable." She could see one corner of his mouth curling upwards into a small, genuine smile.

"Is that the translation for you telling me we're lucky?" Zin quirked her eyebrows lightheartedly while still showing a joking expression upon her face.

"Effectively, yes." He took a moment to wipe away some particular strands of her hair which ad blown very near to her eyes, her taking note in the process of the slight chill on his hands. Obviously being up on the roof of a tall building, like they were right now, would make anyone's hand temperature drop, but she'd managed to notice even when they were still indoors just a few seconds prior that this slight chill was still present; it seemed as if it were a constant characteristic of himself not unlike a personality trait. Her mother's hands also usually had this same chill to them - a peculiarity of the Trill - but Khan's own felt different, like some kind of entirely different coolness. "And I'm glad that it means we're able to touch each other now."

"Yeah. I am, too." She said, while simultaneously thinking in her mind without speaking it out loud that this chill to his hands was somewhat poetic: prior to this whole matter, they were a representation of his heart - a reflection of his inner self - but now they were a contrast to it. There was still a warmness to his heart before the last few days, but it took a jumpstart and a little bit of prompting to bring it out of the tiny, solitary box it had been sitting in and turn it into this contrast. "Should we go back inside? I think it’s getting a little cold up here." Asked Zinalya.

"I don’t think there’s any rush for us to leave this roof." Khan gave his reply, as his previously small smile grew to about three sizes and he then, without warning, reached towards her torso and pulled her towards his own. It wasn’t an unpleasant moment to her, only unexpected instead; in fact, it served as another warm shiver source. "And as for the coldness, there’s an easy way of remedying that." His arms slid around her shoulders and onto her back, to which she managed to slide her own hands up onto his chest and snuggle into it in that position. As he looked down and watched the wind whip up some of her hair again while she turned her head to one side, Khan continued to hold her and felt, for the first time, that he was fulfilled and was now well and truly whole. 

At her apartment, Zin was still up and about several hours later, once the sky was very nearly dark. Khan, meanwhile, who she was allowing to stay there with her for the final few days before they left Earth now that he was apparently “in her custody”, was in a state of drifting in and out of consciousness but mainly remaining in the latter. She’d additionally come up with an agreement where, so that they could both remain warm and safe, they would share her bed over those nights, which was the location where these consciousness shifts were taking place. 

She was about to go to her bedroom and join him now that she was in her nightgown, when she suddenly heard a knock at the apartment’s door. Wondering to herself about who it could be, the answer to this query was soon provided when she opened it.   
"Oh, hey." Zinalya greeted the two people who were at the door, surprised - they had also been the last pair she’d expected to have voted in favour of her and Khan’s exile earlier that day.   
Spock and Bones. Stood right in front of her, on the landing which was exposed to the night air. 

"Good evening, lieutenant-commander." Said Spock cordially, while the doctor nodded in his own silent greeting, and then asked out of curiosity, "Is he here?"

The word ‘he’ was a little bit of an ambiguous term, but she could nonetheless tell who the half Vulcan was referring to. Her lips tightened slightly but visibly as her eyes flicked between the two of them and she answered tersely with, "He is, yes; he’s asleep." She knew it would be unreasonable of her to be actually, properly angry at them after they’d done this aforementioned act of voting in her and Khan’s favour back in the courtroom, but she wanted to make her irritation seen - the act of them originally not agreeing with her and casting her feelings aside to condemn him in the first place meant she was still annoyed with both of them. 

Spock took a moment of pause before he spoke again. "Dr. McCoy and I came here to tell you our reasons for the side we took our votes on, in the hopes that we can make amends with you."

She nodded her own head. "I’m listening."

"Because it seemed logical to contribute to allowing you to do as you wish. You are a trusted crewmate, lieutenant-commander Hamilton, so letting you do what you feel is right is the right thing for ourselves to do in turn."

"Plus, I didn’t wanna keep what happened yesterday fresh." Bones finally spoke up, and then took a breath during a second of his own before elaborating. "The stuff I said to you was way outta line, ‘cause you’re right: even if I have my own doubts about him, that doesn’t mean I can just tell you who you’re allowed to have feelings for. What I’m tryin’ to say is, I was wrong to say that stuff, and I’m sorry."

Now it was her turn to nod, her face’s look of irritation beginning to erode. "I’m sorry I slapped you, too."

"If it was me dealing with that and not you I probably would’ve done the same thing." The CMO replied reassuringly to this.

Zinalya’s expression afterwards slowly grew into a smile. "Thanks you two, it was kind of you to come here and tell me this."

"We didn’t wanna leave things between us like this for long. Hell, Spock’s got a little more trouble than me at expressing this..." He raised his eyebrows jokingly and chuckled. 

"Thank you, doctor." This science officer himself commented in response, also in what sounded like a little bit of a lighthearted way of speaking.

"...But he was right when he just said how you’re a trusted crewmate, Zin."

Another positive event had just happened, which was the very subject that she’d expressed her worries to Scotty and Pavel about that morning: things had become patched back up again between her and McCoy and Spock. There seemed to now be no more of the feud between her and this duo which had been triggered during the previous afternoon, and this combined with the larger positive event which had taken place on this current day meant that, like Khan earlier, she suddenly felt herself become flooded with a mental sensation of fulfilment. 


	9. Epilogue (Sad Ending) ~ Whispers in Your Ear

**[Warning: there’s mentions of alcoholism/alcohol abuse in this part]**

  
After the fateful day in the courtroom - the day when there was going to be one of two verdicts given and the one which was picked in the end was the negative one - Zinalya spent the rest of that day in the company of her senior crewmates from the _Enterprise_ , and then the next morning began travelling on her way to Canada to visit her parents.   
The feud between her and Spock and Bones seemed to have come to an end, which she was still grateful for, but she found it hard to focus on this gratitude for their understanding when the man who the matter itself revolved around had been taken away from her for the rest of her life. She spent almost the entirety of the journey back to her home country in immense surprise at what had happened, still not quite believing that things had turned out this way.

However, this soon changed once she’d finally reached her mother and father’s home, her childhood home, in Manitoba. As soon as Mason answered the door after she’d knocked upon it, she melted into hugging him, which he was much more than happy to return; as he put his arms around his youngest child comfortingly and gently patted her back, she told him what had taken place. What had happened to Khan.   
This latter man had been put back into cryosleep, never to be reawakened again. Somewhere between life and death. This fact that he wasn’t actually dead and was, effectively, only sleeping, made her feel like it was even more cruel than him actually being dead: she would never get the chance for it to happen, but there would still always be that option available to wake him up again. It was just an option which would always be out of her reach. 

And then, as she fully explained the previous day’s events and this sentence he’d been given to Mason and Siazru, she eventually melted even further into a full onslaught of tears. They fell even more uncontrollably from her eyes with every time she said something as part of this recount she was giving, realising one three-word fact about the whole thing that she realised sounded childish but was simply the truth: it wasn’t fair. She did realise the crimes that Khan had committed, but she could additionally still remember how apologetic he was for getting himself and her into the entire situation as a result of them, and she also realised that this still wasn’t an excuse for her to be made to feel this way. To be made to feel as if her future had been snatched away from her in just the span of a few minutes.

At this moment, Zinalya’s mother wasted no time in shuffling towards her across the sofa that the three were sitting on and giving her a consoling hug of her own.   
"I know it hurts a lot right now, but it _will_ get better." Siazru spoke to her half human daughter softly. The hearts of both the former and Mason ached at the sight of Zinalya being as upset as this - they’d felt pity and their own sadness for her when she’d cried on other occasions before, during her upbringing, but none quite a strong as what they felt on this particular one. 

"I know it’s going to be hard, but yeah, you’ve got to keep holding on to hope." Mason added in agreement with his wife, in this same tone. "Because your mother’s right: it may very well take a while, but it’ll get better, that’s a promise." He shuffled over to her in addition and joined in as he and Siazru then both put their arms around Zin to amplify the solace they were trying to give her. 

During the rest of her sabbatical to what had been the house she grew up in, which was another ten days after that one, Zinalya’s brothers Rajen and Enaar Hamilton, along with Enaar’s wife, Leah Hamilton, had come to this same house two days after her own arrival, so that they, too, could offer their comfort to her in her despair. Enaar, the middle-born sibling, worked in a publishing office, while Rajen, the oldest of the three, was an architect, and was still currently unmarried but was a person who Enaar and Zinalya had looked up to as children. Whenever there was a squabble between the latter two during these years, Rajen was usually the one who managed to break it up and calm his little brother and sister down.   
  
As before with their parents, many more hugs were shared with these two other hybrids and the spouse of one of them for this purpose of trying to comfort her, but after another few days Khan’s absence became harder and harder to even at least partially ignore. He was her other half, and the fact that this other half was still out there in the world and she’d never be allowed to be with him never stopped hurting no matter how many times she went over this same point in her head, meaning it was a fact whose pain that came with it would always be undeniable even with repetition. She felt, as a result, more incomplete than she’d ever felt in her life. 

  
Even after this week and a half had gone and she was then back in San Francisco, either spending her free time in her apartment or going with her crewmates on the _Enterprise_ to carry out errand orders for Starfleet once some repairs had gone underway - the ship’s proper rechristening wasn’t due until a little bit under a year on from then - it didn’t get any better. In fact, it actually lapsed into something worse.   
The hopeless longing for Khan, after a month or so, drove Zinalya into alcoholism. She especially grew to favour Romulan ale, but vodka and root beer were up there to make the top three, as well. Some days she’d lapse into thoughts about him and eventually then end up crying endlessly in private, and on others there was no crying involved, only a void within herself, but regardless of which of these two categories a day fit into when she did this reminiscing, she’d attempt to solve the problem with one of these three drinks.

On one particular night on the _Enterprise_ , Scotty and Pavel had gone to her quarters to check on how she was, when they entered to find her clutching a large bottle of vodka in her right hand while sitting on her bed, with her back up against the wall and her legs stretched out in front of her, and at this point she was slightly drunk. For most of the rest of that night, these two closest friends of hers sat with her and listened as she explained to them that she still knew that Khan was in an eternal sleep and wasn’t going to try to pretend that this wasn’t the case, but that her use of alcohol helped her to forget how that fact felt to her. She was trying to forget the pain but without losing her grip on the reality of the situation in the first place. 

Jim and the other senior officers grew to be just as worried about her as this pair, and also became emotional rocks for her, which was another thing she was grateful for. When push came to shove, she knew she could count on them to help each other out.   
It was now three months on from the main events of this story. She still smiled a lot less, and her behaviour was still noticeably different. Another void-oriented night in her apartment was in progress; tonight, though, she was beginning to rely on alcohol less compared to before, after her crewmates’ words encouraging her to not resort to something which could potentially destroy her. After downing the rest of her small bottle of beer, she reluctantly decided to call that a day and put the bottle down next to her as she turned on the cold tap in her bathroom and started splashing the water into her face. Zin momentarily looked up to see a woman with somewhat red and bloodshot eyes looking back at her before turning her gaze back down to the sink, turning off the tap again. She didn’t even have anything to remember him by except for the mission reports from three months ago - no photos, no nothing. It was as if he’d vanished into thin air. 

And then, via her ever-changing train of thought, she remembered the name of the facility where he and the rest of his crew were apparently being held: Sierra-Lambda 3. A highly secret and also very heavily guarded outpost on the outskirts of New York City whose location she and the rest of the high-ranking _Enterprise_ crewmembers were aware of.   
A place where there was a possibility of being able to enter that little bit more easily due to being a Starfleet member. 

Her emotion of sadness slowly began to erode away into a sense of hope and calculation.   
She could practically feel, in addition, some kind of newfound inner voice calling to her and beckoning her. _Go on, go on_ , it whispered. _Go off the script and colour outside the lines; you’re going to have to break the rules if you want him back_.  
 _Yes_. She could hear herself mentally responding, after a few seconds, to this inner urge. _I’ll accept these terms, let’s do it. Let’s get him back..._

There were no details just yet, but an idea was forming in Zinalya’s head that was growing to be more and more appealing with every moment, to the point where she started to slowly look up again from the sink and grinned darkly, her irises shrinking a tiny little bit as well. Had she been in a different frame of mind right now, she probably would’ve ended up frightening herself upon seeing this grin looking back at her in the mirror, but she had bigger things on this mind of hers at the moment.  
After three months of almost nonstop despair at her future being taken away, she’d finally regained the prospect of undoing that event. This situation called for drastic measures - if she and Khan wouldn’t legally be allowed to be together, she would have to take the non-legal course of action and rescue him herself.

"I’ll come and find you, Khan." She said out loud to herself at a quiet volume. "Someday, somehow, I’ll wake you up and get you out of there."


	10. Epilogue (Happy Ending) ~ Take My Hand and Run With Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I am so, so sorry I haven’t done any updates in about a month!! I was on some kind of writing streak for this and then somehow I just suddenly lost it for a few weeks lol. X3 Anyway, now that I’ve finally finished off this last part, enjoy, and thank you for reading, lovelies. ^^

After this fateful day of the positive outcome ultimately being chosen in that courtroom, and after the reconciliation between Zinalya and Bones and Spock, which ended the feud between her and this pair, she’d promptly entered into her bedroom and joined Khan in her bed. When she did, she couldn't stop herself from shuffling across the mattress in the dark towards where he was sleeping, his boots and shirt currently off. The only way she could tell that she'd reached her destination during this shuffling was when she suddenly felt the front of one of his shoulders touch up against her. Just as she'd closed her eyes, though, she was surprised when she felt, still not being aware of it visually due to this aforementioned darkness, the arm connected to this shoulder of his reaching up and gently putting his hand onto her shoulder; obviously either this moment where she bumped into his shoulder woke him up or he was already at least partially awake to do this. She was all too happy to reach up with one of her own forearms and hold this one of Khan's that was holding her shoulder, drifting off in bliss.  
She was lying in bed with the man who she wanted to, and was going to, essentially run away with - a man who reciprocated these affections and wanted to be with her in return - and the most difficult part of that plan was now finally over. Her worries, similar to what she and this same man were going to be doing, could now sail off into the sunset. 

Khan, remembering that it was this woman he was lying with who had been responsible for bringing about this outcome for the both of them, gently whispered in her ear the words, "Thank you."

Then there came the warm shivers on her spine again.

Following this night of sharing a bed together, Zinalya’s exhilaration in this kind of presence of Khan’s didn’t falter. With him still under her guard, and attracting many glares and fearful glances from passers-by as they did so which they both ignored, the pair travelled on their way to Canada - specifically, on their way to her parents’ home. The anger and intense disdain from these aforementioned glares they got was very palpable, and at points threatened to make them want to stop their journey and hide away in a corner somewhere, but the nature around them which caught their eyes proved to be a good enough distraction, including when Khan saw, just for a few moments, a ruby-throated hummingbird fluttering near to a flower a few feet away. After all, who could blame him? Hummingbirds are some of the most beautiful birds to exist on Earth, and yet they were simultaneously so small and quaint. 

Then their arrival came, after which Zin's father, mother, older brothers Enaar and Rajen Hamilton and Enaar’s wife Leah - these latter three having also gotten there after finding out about Zin’s own impending arrival - all listened patiently without uttering a word as, sat next to each other on the lounge sofa, she and Khan gave the same origins explanation that he himself had given her two days ago. However, this time he didn’t go quite so deeply into the details: when he went over this particular segment of his childhood, Tanvir’s death was still painful to him, so he preferred to not go over it often if he could avoid it. 

"Answer me one last thing, Khan." Mason leaned forwards from the seat he was sitting on. He and his wife were sitting next to their two sons and their daughter in law, opposite from their youngest child and the man who was now her lover. "Is Zinalya safe with you? Will she be alright when she goes to this exile planet?" The father of the Hamilton siblings had spent the last few minutes during the explanation weighing up the Augment in his mind, as he would always love all three of his children and as a result of this love he wanted them to be happy, which is why he accepted Zin's choice, but he had to be sure of this question he'd just put forward. 

Khan then looked straight back into his eyes without blinking once, to ensure that the honesty in what he was about to say in reply would be doubly clear. "Your daughter will _always_ be safe with me, Mr. Hamilton."

The pair stuck around for another two days so that Zinalya could make her goodbyes to her parents, siblings and sister-in-law and spend these two days with them. There were many heartfelt words of goodbyes shared with the aforementioned family. Mason, Siazru, Enaar, Leah, Rajen... she wasn't going to be able to see any of them again for the next ten years, so as you would have imagined this was a particularly crucial goodbye, and, as you also would’ve imagined, tears were shed.

Then, once the adequately repaired _Enterprise_ had departed for Ceti Alpha V, the same rule of Zin effectively being a babysitter making sure Khan kept himself out of trouble was applied to a different environment. As with back on Earth during the journey to Manitoba, some of the crew gave stares that ranged from confusion at her attraction to him to disgust, but, also as with this journey to her childhood home, neither of them were bothered about these stares. Mind you, Khan did sometimes, whenever he saw them being given, return with his own unnervingly frosty and unblinking glare, but this was the only thing that happened. A large majority of his time during the trek to what would be their new home was spent in Zinalya’s quarters, where he would predominantly occupy himself with either reading or daydreaming. His mind was a vast cathedral, and during these moments when he did the latter, he found that it was one which he could almost tangibly walk through and explore; a place lined with huge gleaming stained glass windows and containing countless passageways and halls. Khan had never really been a religious man, so the fact that this place in his mind could be described as a cathedral was something that he found unusual, but nonetheless, mentally taking this journey to said mind basilica always calmed him, even if just slightly.

"You’d damn well better not hurt her." Jim’s tone of voice while addressing this Augment four days later wasn’t particularly aggressive or vicious, but was nevertheless authoritative and, instead of it being out of anger, this command was spoken out of concern for his now former security chief and crewmate’s well-being. 

"Oh how could I refuse such an order, captain?" Responded Khan, also not maliciously and instead with satire. He and Zinalya were standing on the _Enterprise_ ’s transporter pad, both carrying a duffel bag each that contained water, basic provisions and some clean clothes, after, a few minutes beforehand, she’d once again shared heartfelt goodbyes. This time it was with Scotty, Pavel, Uhura, Spock, Carol, Sulu, Kirk and Bones, all of which involving hugs, and now that she was about to complete the process of leaving behind her life in Starfleet, she’d additionally taken off the red operations division overshirt of her uniform dress, so now all that remained was its black layer underneath - this all-black colouring of her getup made her current appearance bear a small similarity to the man next to her. 

"I... guess I’ll be seeing you round, sir." Stuck for how else he’d current emotions could be put into words, she chose these ones as she also suddenly found the inescapable weight on her chest at leaving her friends growing again. 

Kirk smiled, him, Bones and Spock all experiencing this same growing weight but simultaneously being happy for the fact that this was all a decision she’d made without any coercion from Khan. "See you round, Zin."

"Perhaps we shall meet one another again at some point, even though we may not know when that point will be." Said Spock.

"Then that way if he stood ya up in the end we’ll get a chance to find out and do something about it." Added the CMO jokingly, earning a stare from the man in the black clothing and matching jet black hair. "I’m just kidding. But seriously, yeah: it’ll be great to see you again someday." His own smile that then emerged mirrored the captain’s, and Spock’s own was a tiny little upwards curl, more unnoticeable but still a virtue of his human half. 

Zinalya nodded her head, her own mouth melting into the same warm expression. "I’d like that too."

Ceti Alpha V’s climate, from what the pair had gathered during the last few minutes, seemed to be a mild one. It was neither freezing cold nor blazing hot, or even leaning slightly towards either of these two temperature sides. It was just... ordinary, but they realised that this might be a time-specific climate and that it’ll get hotter or colder later, as this was an unfamiliar planet which therefore had unfamiliar weather seasons. However, all that mattered now was that the temperature and weather at this present moment were good and that it was now _well and truly_ over. Both Zinalya and Khan were free to be together in their exile sentences on this world, and now that, as mentioned above, the events of this story were over and they’d actually reached their destination, they felt a new and previously unknown kind of undeniable bliss coursing through their veins, in their minds and hearts. 

She’d spent a couple of these last few minutes gazing out at a flat area of land, a valley, to be precise, over a grassy hill which, like the aforementioned current temperature in the air, was neither what you’d call too high nor too low. Most of the valley’s ground seemed to be dusty and rocky, but there were grassy and viable crop-growing regions for the rest, all decorated with what appeared to be a stream stretching through one part of the valley. 

"I think I’ve found a good place for us to set up!" Yelled out Zinalya, running back down the hill and towards where she and Khan had been beamed down to along with the seventy-two cryotubes containing his Augment companions. A few seconds before she’d left to go up the hill and take a look at the surrounding terrain, he’d told her that he was attempting to unfreeze and revive one of these seventy-two companions, although she hadn’t found out any more specific details such as their name or what they looked like, so when she finally reached this beam site again, she was mildly surprised when she saw another person standing and conversing with him.   
This other person seemed to be a woman, whose long ebony hair stretched down elegantly behind her back and whose eye colour was brown. She had a light brown skin tone and the way she carried herself gave off an elegance that applied to her entirety and not just her hair. 

"You must be Miss Hamilton." Her voice, which was smooth and amicable not too unlike the chirp of a hummingbird, contained an Indian accent. 

"Yeah, that’s right. I guess that means Khan just told you about me?"

"He did; he said you’re the one who was responsible for getting us here." The woman nodded her head and smiled sweetly, and while this exchange was taking place, she seemed to be leaning slightly against the side of the now open cryotube that he’d defrosted, most likely because of the initial grogginess from being awoken. "I’m Kati." She fully turned towards Zin and extended her right hand. 

"Good to be meeting you." The half Trill replied in the same amicable manner, shaking Kati’s right hand with her own. "I’ve gotta say, you’re being a lot more friendly with me so far than I thought you were going to be." 

The female Augment chuckled. "Well, from what I understand you were the kindest to Khan while I was still sleeping, and since then you still haven’t done anything that’s put any of us in danger, so you seem nice and friendly yourself. I thought I might as well treat you as such."

"We can’t make any promises regarding Joaquin’s own tolerance, however." This male one himself said. "He was what you might regard as the hothead in our group, and he doesn’t trust outsiders easily. But I’m certain that sooner or later he’ll learn to open himself up to you."

"So, shall we wake up the others?" Said Kati. 

"Yeah, lets get to it." Zinalya nodded. 

"I agree. You also said you’d found a place for us to establish our settlement?"

"It’s just over these hills. There’s a river and grasslands and everything."

He turned to Kati. "Your thoughts?"

"It sounds good enough to me."

"Very well then." He walked over to one of the other tubes, all of them sitting next to supply crates which the _Enterprise_ crew - this ship having left again by now - had sent down in addition to help with the initial setup of their lives on this planet. His fingers went up to the circular keypad on the top of this particular tube and began to initiate the same process as he’d done with that of the black-haired woman. 

"I’m just going up to have a look for myself at this place you found, I’ll be back in a minute." Said black-haired woman spoke to Zinalya again before setting off in the same direction the latter had come down from. This one whose own hair was burgundy went to stand next to Khan, looking down through the cryotube’s glass at the masculine face inside which gave off a hint of authoritativeness despite the eyes, the windows to the soul, being closed.

"This is Joaquin." The man with the porcelain skin told her when he noticed her looking down through the glass. 

"Can you show me how to wake them up?" She looked back at this conscious one who’d just spoken. "You know, so that when Kati gets back it’ll all be done quicker with three pairs of hands?"

"Of course." The smile that appeared on Khan’s face as he gave this answer wasn’t that big but was soft and beautiful even so, the sight of this causing the same reaction on Zinalya’s. He then started to demonstrate the defrosting process on the keypad for her, going about it a little bit more slowly this time to make it easier for her to see every step, and she watched carefully. 


End file.
